Regex and unicode
Use a subrange of [\u0000-\uFFFF] for what you want.
You can also use the re.UNICODE compile flag. The docs say that if UNICODE is set, \w will match the characters [0-9_] plus whatever is classified as alphanumeric in the Unicode character properties database.
See also http://coding.derkeiler.com/Archive/Python/comp.lang.python/2004-05/2560.html.
Python's re module doesn't support \p{Letter} or \X. However, the new regex implementation on PyPI does.
In Mastering Regular Expressions from Jeffrey Friedl (great book) it is mentioned that you could use \p{Letter} which will match unicode stuff that is considered a letter.